


Not a Nora Ephron Movie

by Silvestria



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, George is still in Italy, Internet Romance, Sukey takes a leap of faith, You've Got Mail meets Sleepless in Seattle, basically a Nora Ephron movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvestria/pseuds/Silvestria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>University librarian Sukey Hutchinson strikes up an email correspondence with an intriguing grad student doing research in Italy. The results are extremely predictable but rather sweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Nora Ephron Movie

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Amy, for letting me borrow Sukey!

It started innocently enough with an email.

_Dear Susannah Hutchinson,_

_I am a graduate student currently on leave at the British School at Rome, focussing on the archaeology of Tacitus' Rome. While the library at the British School is in many ways excellent, I have not been able to locate some important accounts from the early nineteenth century pertaining to the development of modern Rome's sewage system, an integral part of my research. Since you are a copyright library, I was wondering if you would be able to get hold of the books (details below) and either transfer them to the British School's library or in some way fax or scan the relevant pages to me?_

_S R Finkalot: The development of Modern Rome in the Dregs of the Ancients from 1621 to 1914, Volumes 2, 3, 4 and 5 (published Edinburgh 1821)_

_I apologise for the obscurity of the request._

_Best wishes,_

_George Hackett_

_Department of Classics_

It was certainly an obscure request and couched in obscure language. Sukey wondered if George Hackett (Department of Classics) talked the same way he wrote. In fact, she even joked to her colleague Ellie that this might well have been the first email he had ever written. Later, she felt guilty for making fun of him. Perhaps he had been reading too much S R Finkalot. Or not, considering his request.

It was easy enough to locate the volume in question but the paperwork required to make copies of the appropriate sections and the additional collaboration with the staff at the British School's library, not to mention dealing with the Italian bureaucracy made it a very long drawn out process. Sukey found that she was sending George Hackett emails several times a day and at some point, it was hard to say when or why or what started it, the global movements of S R Finkalot (volumes 2, 3, 4 and 5) ceased to be the only or most important topic of their correspondence.

Perhaps she had asked him a question about his research and he had actually answered her in two long paragraphs which were more intriguing than they were dull. Very few people actually spent their time looking at the sewage system in Rome after all with so much historical and literary enthusiasm. Perhaps it was because she had one day spent her lunch break reading Tacitus' _Annals_ online and mentioned it to him, receiving back excited questions on which bits and what she thought within the hour. It was a strange feeling, somebody who was an expert being so interested in her brain and her rather frivolous thoughts on Roman history. Perhaps it was because he had apologised in one email for not replying the previous afternoon; he had left work early to go to the opera. _Which opera_? she had replied, impressed. He answered instantly. Emails seemed a bit silly at this point.

Facebook stalking was the obvious solution and she found him easily. His privacy settings were high (which she admired) but she was able to see a string of profile pictures of a young man with curly dark hair standing looking pensive next to various ancient monuments. She could rarely make out the details of his face, since the pictures were more interested in the inanimate objects than the human being next to them, but it was nice to put some kind of face to the name. She sent him a tentative message, using wanting to hear about the opera and not wanting to use her work email as the excuse. She imagined he would probably ignore her. But he did not.

They became Facebook friends and suddenly it was so much easier to chat at any time of day without sending long emails where she always agonised over her wording and spelling. By this point, Finkalot was but a distant memory. There was no need for them to keep talking, and yet they did.

She read more Tacitus. At first it had seemed dry and a lot of it was, even George admitted that. But there were also scheming empresses and senators who accidentally pushed their wives out of the window. There was murder and mystery and disaster and even some unexpected humour in Tacitus' deeply disapproving moralising over the court gossip he so assiduously reported. Sukey lay awake at night wondering what it was about Tacitus that appealed to George. What was _he_ like? She really wanted to know. She asked him, he answered, and somehow they were talking about themselves and their values before she knew what was happening.

It was not all one sided. She told George about her favourite bands and he downloaded some songs – and then started quoting them back at her over Facebook. He asked for her address and sent her a Christmas card. It was a charmingly old fashioned thing to do and she wished she had thought of the same.

“Who's George?” her brother Ben had asked, casually going through the cards on her mantelpiece.

“Oh! He's-” What, exactly? “A friend from work.”

One day, over Christmas, George casually asked her if she had Skype. “It feels very strange, as if I know you so well and yet I've never spoken to you face to face.”

She had downloaded Skype by the end of the day and she kept thinking about that sentence for a long time.

By this point, she had seen more pictures of him than just the long-distance leaning-against-a-fallen-pillar profile pics. Nevertheless, there was something unexpected about seeing his face appear right in front of her, taking up almost all of the screen, about seeing his hands approach the screen as he adjusted the angle of his laptop, and being able to distinguish a trace of stubble and a reflection of light in his dark eyes. He was sitting in front of a bookcase and Sukey was not even at all surprised until she realised that he would be able to see her ancient poster of the Tenth Doctor and Martha on the wall of her bedroom behind her. He had a deep voice, a posh accent and a habit of running his hands nervously through his hair. She found his hands fascinating, seeing them for the first time. She wondered what sort of odd quirks he was picking up from her in the same way and worried about whether she ought to have worn more make-up or angled the screen differently or whether she gesticulated too much.

George did not smile much but by the end of that first conversation, which lasted over an hour, she began to realise that there was a lightening of his expression and a curve of his lips that was almost better on him than a smile on anyone else.

“This is insane,” said her friend Anne, when she told her everything in an excited, hushed voice the following day over tea and muffins. “You are falling for a guy you have never met and you have talked to once over Skype. You live in different countries, you have no friends in common. Sukey, this is not a Nora Ephron movie! He is not going to jump on a plane and appear outside your front door with an engagement ring. This is _real life_ and there is literally no way this has a happy ending.”

“I know that,” said Sukey, pushing crumbs around her plate, and wondering whether George preferred chocolate or blueberry muffins. She already knew that he liked coffee more than tea, but only if it was a proper Italian espresso: nothing else would do.

They talked for even longer that night.

By this point, it was many months since the October day when Sukey had received the email which would change her life. She tried to pretend it hadn't. After all, her day-to-day existence had barely altered, except for the nearly constant stream of messages appearing on her phone and the evening Skype chats. And yet she felt happy in a way she had never felt before, as if somebody was looking out for her and caring for her in a new and utterly thrilling way. They never talked about their feelings and she sometimes wondered if it was after all just in her head and he did not care much for her at all. But she could not stop feeling the way she felt. She also listened to a lot more opera than she had before and she had read the whole of Tacitus' _Annals_ which surprised even herself.

“You know my friend Ellery?” said Ben to her one day.

“Mmm?”

“He wants to ask you out.”

This was not at all what she had expected. She looked up from the skirt she was mending and wrinkled her nose. “Really? Are you sure?”

“He told me. He's liked you for ages but he's just not sure that you see him as anything except a friend.”

“Your friend,” Sukey snapped unexpectedly. “I hardly know him.” Her brother stared at her. “Well, if he wants to ask me out, he should do it himself instead of hiding behind you like a coward!”

She grabbed her sewing and nearly ran out of the room. Alone in her bedroom, heart pounding, she felt sorry for how she had spoken to him. It was just... a surprise. She had never thought of Ellery like that; she had never thought he might have liked her like that either. Had she encouraged him by accident? Would it be so terrible if she had?

 _Yes_ , her heart whispered. _Because of George._

And there it was.

She could not date George for he lived in Italy and she did not even know how he felt about her. Oh, there had been the odd comment that had seemed affectionate and appreciative, but he was reserved about his feelings in general. There was, of course, the fact that he voluntarily talked to the librarian he had never met from another country every evening. Surely if he felt nothing he would not do that? Sukey knew in her heart that it was true, but was that enough?

The fact remained that she might not be able to date George, but while she felt this way, she could not very well date anyone else either.

She spent the rest of the day in a state of anxious, fretful excitement. She could settle to nothing. She rearranged half a song for her folk band, kneaded bread and forgot to bake it, watched almost all of an episode of a new period drama online and then stopped without seeing the ending... She kept looking at her watch until the time when she normally Skyped George.

It did not take him long to realise something was wrong, but she brushed it off. He had started telling her about his day when she could bear it no longer.

“George, I have to say something,” she interrupted him, her hands twisting together nervously.

“Of course. What's wrong? I know something is.” Then he simply looked at her, giving her his full attention as if she was the only person in the world 

“I...” Her mouth felt dry. She pushed on regardless and the rest of the words came out in a nearly incoherent tumble. “I want to tell you how I feel because I like you. I really like you. I mean, more than anyone else. You're all I think about. I know it sounds stupid, but it's true. I'm sorry! And I know that it's hard and I've never met you so maybe I'm wrong and there's nothing there – but what if there is? I don't know how you feel, I really don't, but I like you and I needed you to know that because – because I want to do something. If there is something here, I want to do something, I want to try... I could – I could get on a plane, or you could and-”

“We could both get on planes.”

“What?”

The mouth was curving up but his voice was very steady. “We could both get on planes so that the cost of the airfare is shared.”

“Where?” she said quickly so that she did not have time to think about it.

“Where do you want to go? Somewhere in-between the both of us.”

“Paris. I've always wanted to go but I never have.”

“Alright. Paris then. It's nearly the summer holidays so let's do it then.”

“The university breaks up soon as well. So... do you-?” She could not even finish the question.

The expression in his eyes was intense. “I want to find out, too.”

Later, when she called Anne to tell her all about it because somebody had to have the details of where she was staying when she flew to Paris to meet a man off the internet (she was telling everyone else she was going on holiday with Anne herself), her friend told her, “This is a genuinely terrible idea, Sukey. This is the worst idea you've ever had in a long history of terrible ideas.”

“It may be,” said Sukey, who was unable to be offended. “But I'm still doing it. It might well be terrible but it could also be wonderful. It could be the beginning of something wonderful. I can't give up on the possibility that it will be.”

Anne was not convinced. “Expensive too. Are you getting separate rooms in the hotel because I really think you should. He might be weird in person. Or creepy. Or have BO.”

“He won't. But yes, we are. I mean, there might be nothing between us, and I don't want it to be embarrassing. We can still hang out as friends.”

“Right,” said Anne. “I totally spend thousands on trips to Paris with friends I've never met before.” 

The trip was booked for the end of June and Sukey and George's conversations between the booking and the actual meeting had an odd restraint about them. George was just as interested in her, just as kind, just as gently engaged by her as ever, but she felt the strangeness of them not talking about her feelings, about what his were, about what might happen. They made their plans for what they wanted to do in Paris – which museums to visit, where to eat, how to navigate the metro system, but in a calmly rational way, as if planning a trip together was a perfectly natural thing to do. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice. 

On the plane, she stuck her headphones in and listened to her Mumford & Sons playlist on repeat as loud as she could bear to drown out her thoughts. She felt nearly sick as she found a place to wait in the airport arrivals lounge. Now she began to doubt herself. What if all their conversations had been a lie? What if she didn't know him at all? What if it would be awkward? What if he had only come to tell her he didn't like her? She began to be obsessed with how tall he was. She had never seen him stand up properly over Skype. Even in pictures she could never be sure because she did not know how tall the other people with him were for comparison. What if he was really short? She had never fancied a short person before. 

Her phone buzzed. 

 _Just landed. Getting my bag. À bientôt, Sukey! x_  

She took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves, even as she had to smile because of _course_ he would use the correct French accents in a text message. 

 _Oui! I'm by the Illy Cafe. Btw, how tall are you? x_  

She kept checking her phone but she didn't get a reply. He was short! That had to be the only explanation. How would she handle her disappointment without hurting his feelings? Or – would his face fall when he saw her? The thought sent a stab of fear straight through her and she turned her camera onto selfie mode to check her hair.

“Er, Sukey? Hello!”

She almost dropped her phone as she looked up. George was standing in front of her in a travel crumpled linen jacket, one hand holding onto his suitcase. He was smiling nervously and blinking owlishly down at her.

“Oh,” she said, “yes.” Her heart was pounding and the smile came without any warning. “You're tall. I'm so glad!”

She stood up to meet him.


End file.
